Outside, Looking In
by LittleBlondeGoth
Summary: One-shot. Tifa Lockhart muses about Avalanche's most enigmatic companion. What does she think makes him the man he is?


_A/N: Takes place after DoC, and for once, something that isn't written from Vincent's point of view. For all that I tend to reside inside the ex-Turk's head, I got to wondering how he looks to someone else's eyes. And I believe Tifa is a girl who's not entirely unsympathetic to his inner workings. It's not so much a story, more a stream of consciousness. At least that's my excuse for the way it skips around, and I'm sticking to it.  
>As for whether the title refers to Vincent or Tifa… Well, I'll let you decide that.<em>

oOo

Quiet. Fragile. Complicated.

There's a lot of words I could use to describe Vincent Valentine, and whilst none of them are wrong exactly, none are completely right either.

He's definitely quiet. A master at hiding in the shadows, he's so quiet sometimes you can forget he's in the same room. But when he's angry – and he _can_ get angry, in spite of what you might think – the screams of Chaos shatter the silence.

He does look fragile. Tall, pale and rangy, he's not an intimidating powerhouse like Barret or the trained SOLDIER's shape of Cloud. But he's nearly indestructible and stronger than the pair of them put together, not that you can tell from the outside.

And he's _very_ complicated. Vincent has more layers to him than an onion – each time you peel one back there's more hiding underneath. But at the same time he's incredibly simple; he loved and lost. The age old story of boy meets girl, boy falls in love but girl leaves boy for someone else... Then of course boy gets killed, revived, experimented on, implanted with demons , goes on to save the world twice and this is where it all gets exceedingly complicated again.

See what I mean about nothing being quite right?

I've said before on more than one occasion that getting blood out of a stone is easier than getting Vincent to open up about himself, but just because it isn't a breeze doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. I've always been… Well, I suppose you could say 'nosy', but I prefer to call it curious. Everything about Vincent intrigues me. He poses so many questions and gives almost no answers. What was he like as a Turk? What exactly went on between him and Hojo? Why are his eyes that colour? Where in Odin's name did he get that ratty old cloak and why does he never take it off?

So ever since those early days, I've made it my mission to prise everything I can out of that man. And I'm getting better at it. For example, he takes his coffee black, one sugar. He's also got a real thing about fine malt whisky; another one of those throwbacks to when he was a Turk I guess. I think I might write a book – "Things I Know About Vincent Valentine". Though I never said it would take you very long to read. It became something of a game, finding out little things about him. I'd score a point for each new piece of information I'd extract from him, even if it was something as insignificant as how he likes coffee. I can't shed any light on the whole cloak mystique I'm afraid, that one still eludes me. We'll call it a work in progress.

I've just noticed that all the things I listed are to do with drinking. You can take the girl out of the bar...

Anyway, I'll start at the beginning. Ours that is. I suppose _his_ beginning was well over half a century ago now; only Vincent can shed any light on that, and Vincent isn't talking.

The beginning then. We'd found some of Hojo's' old scribblings while some of us were hunting round the old Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim. I was pretty rattled at the time, trying to reconcile my memory of the town burning to the ground with the evidence of my own eyes saying it hadn't. So the bizarre notes from Shinra's maddest scientist, talking about experiments and people locked in basements really didn't help matters. It only got worse when we went down there. Cold and neglected, the atmosphere underground in that mansion was oppressive, weighted down with history. We found the hidden labs that were used for the Jenova Project. We found the old library, where Sephiroth learned his true origins. And we found the coffins.

They were tucked away in a little room, so out of the way we didn't even spot it the first time. It was only as we left the laboratory that Cloud found the door. Inside... It looked like Hojo had been busy, whatever he'd been getting up to. Boxes and bones were scattered everywhere, discarded as if they were simply refuse to him. Which, in all likelihood, they probably were. Skeletons and spiders, there was nothing here that wasn't dead and rotting away; all apart from one coffin resting at the back.

What did we expect to find, when Cloud pushed the lid aside? I'm not sure, even now. Another dusty cadaver, most likely – Hojo's note had been penned decades ago, what else rationally _could_ there have been? Rational had never been one of Hojo's strong points however, so what we got was altogether different.

I think we all took an involuntary step or two back, because let's be honest here, Vincent is one hell of an intimidating man, especially when you see him for the first time. He was cloaked in shadow, wreathed by a mass of jet black hair, one arm glinting golden, pale as a corpse and all we could really see of his face was those burning red eyes. He rose from that box like a ghost, and I had no clue if fight or flight would be the better option. In retrospect, I think 'fight' would have been a very bad idea. But then he spoke.

Thinking back, it wasn't so much a discussion as a well conducted interrogation. He demanded answers from us, prised everything he could out of Cloud for very little in return, then told us in no uncertain terms to get out.

We got out.

Let me tell you something about his voice. Listening to him on the rare occasions he does have something to say, it's like he's gargling nails and treacle. It's gravelly and deep, since thirty years without talking will do that to your vocal chords. There's also very little emotion to it. I know when I talk, my voice bounces around a lot – there's highs and lows and you can generally tell what I'm thinking by how I say things. Vincent has a... a filter. Everything he says gets processed through this filter, which strips out just about every semblance of feeling from it, only leaving the words behind. Needless to say, I've never seen him lose a game of poker. But there's an underlying edge to his tone as well that carries the expectation of being obeyed without question; a legacy from his days as a Turk. It's uncanny, you find you've started to do what he tells you before you even realise you're doing it. So when he accosted us outside and informed us that he would be joining our group, no-one even thought to argue until it was too late.

You could tell we were uneasy though – everyone's glance kept flicking back and forth between each other and the tall dark man stalking behind us. Even Aeris looked unnerved. And with good reason – all we knew about this stranger were the few meagre details he'd given in exchange for information about Sephiroth: He used to work for the Turks; he knew Sephiroths' mother; his name was Vincent Valentine. Then he'd clammed up. That pretty much set the trend for the next few years, really.

It wasn't all a bed of roses when we regrouped, either. To say Barret was unhappy would be the understatement of the year. His history with Shinra has been none too pleasant, and when he found out we had brought a Turk with us he hit the roof. I think his fury could have been heard back in Midgar. He was all for throwing our latest acquisition off the highest peak in Nibelheim to see if he bounced, but just one glare from Vincent was enough to halt that suggestion at the pass. In this case, the glare said "I'd like to see you try". Barret backed down after that. These days of course, we know Vincent has even fewer reasons to be fond of Shinra than Barret does, but for those first weeks after he joined us, tensions ran high.

Initially, I believe he only came with us for one reason, and one reason alone. Vengeance. He didn't want to join Avalanche to save the world, in effect we were just travelling in the direction he wanted to go and were handy to have along. Vincent wanted his revenge.

And that's another thing. He is Vincent. Not Vince, or Vin or any other nickname you might try to hang on him. Yuffie once spent an hour (and I have to give her credit for her perseverance) trying to get him to answer to one of those names. She got very creative in fact, but might as well have been talking to a brick wall for all the response she received. Eventually she reached the end of her tether and let out an exasperated "Vincent!", at which point he tilted his head towards her ever so slightly and raised an eyebrow, which as we all know is Vincent-speak for "yes?". By this time unfortunately, the ninja had forgotten what she'd been trying to ask him in the first place and stormed off to commit some form of petty larceny to cheer herself up.

It feels right though. His name, I mean. He's quiet, and serious, and a Vincent. Maybe he was a Vince back in some wilder Turk days and just doesn't want to be reminded of them?

Anyway, in spite of our various initial misgivings, we settled into a new routine. We would march on and do our thing, while Vincent lurked on the outskirts, scouting ahead, checking behind and keeping watch at night. He's ideal for it really. He doesn't sleep much these days – again, I think that could have something to do with how he spent the past thirty years. And anyone trying to ambush our camp would be in for the surprise of their life. Especially since that life was likely to come to a rather abrupt halt at the wrong end of a triple-barrelled shotgun. To this day I've no idea how he does it. You look at Vincent, and you think there's no way you can miss him. I mean, a six foot man with blazing red eyes, a claw for a hand and a small weapons arsenal concealed about his person is going to stand out, right? Wrong. He fades into the background, and unless he says something, you'd hardly know he was there.

You can't sneak up on him either. Vincent at night is impossible to get the drop on. Believe me, I tried. It's like he knows how at home he is, there in the darkness. I asked him about it once, later on. Cornered him the fifth time he called my name out as I approached when I swear I wasn't making a sound. I got the usual "Hnn" to start with, but my curiosity wasn't going to be foisted off that easily. Eventually he caved in, and explained it a little. Apparently it's to do with not staying still. He said a patch of darkness that doesn't move stands out, so instead, you move with your surroundings to stay inconspicuous. I nodded, since it did make a strange kind of sense when I thought about it, but then his lips twitched into that most rare of things - a Vincent smile – and added that enhanced hearing, sense of smell and eyesight might have helped in their own way. I had to laugh. His sense of humour is drier than Corel desert, but it still exists.

Any lingering objections were put to rest once we got into a fight. Watching Vincent fight is an experience in itself. He is… brutally efficient. If he thinks someone should die, then that person is dead; he doesn't waste time or energy on unnecessary action. He doesn't shoot to disable unless there is no other option, instead he will always go straight for the kill. It's terrifyingly beautiful, the way he moves. There's a fluidity to it that I envy sometimes. It's hard to explain… The closest I can come to describing him is that wherever he is, is where he is meant to be. There is no question of him being elsewhere. Does that even make sense? He's not exactly a slouch hand-to-hand either, since anything straying too close to him gets into range of that vicious golden gauntlet. Who taught him to fight this way? I wonder if he was always like this, or whether it's a result of Hojo's modifications?

And the modification was a whole other can of worms in itself. The note hadn't told us much, so it was only gradually we found out more about him and by extension what Hojo had done, though at this point I will refer you to my earlier observation about stones and blood. Vincent rarely speaks, but when he does you know that it's important. And you'd better damn well be listening, because he won't repeat himself; he expects you to keep up with what he's saying, and that's not always simple - Vincent seems to see and understand a lot deeper than most people do.

He claimed his body was his punishment for his sins. Hojo had… altered him, in ways I didn't even think were possible. Heightened senses, greater speed, strength and stamina, replaced his arm with that metallic claw… And this was thirty years ago. Thirty _years_. Three decades. I think we often forget that when we look at him. He'd been locked away in that coffin before most of us were even born and hadn't aged a day, at least physically. Mentally, he's lived more lifetimes than anyone deserves. It's terrible to think that while I was growing up in Nibelheim, while the town burned and was rebuilt, he was down there in the basement of the Mansion, living his nightmares over and over.

Because of all these experiments performed on him, he heals incredibly fast too. I remember Yuffie once telling me how she hauled him out of the Shinra mansion when Rosso attacked. Said he had a hole in his chest bigger than her fist, there was blood everywhere and he was good as dead. She patched him up as best she could, but she honestly thought he'd never wake up. Yuffie Kisaragi is a wall of confidence that you could bounce rocks off of, so when the Single White Rose of Wutai admits to feeling petrified for someone's life, you know it's bad.

Of course, all this pales in comparison to the _other_ experiment Hojo performed on Vincent.

I don't remember a lot about that first transformation, but what I do remember feels like too much. None of us knew or even suspected at that point that what Hojo had done amounted to more than a bit of tinkering – making him unusually strong or uncannily fast. So when it happened, the shock alone...

I have no idea how he'd intended to broach the subject with us, if he'd even been going to at all. Maybe he'd been hoping the need wouldn't arise, but that doesn't feel right, not for Vincent. He's a realist; he never struck me as the sort of person to cling on to a vain hope, and no-one knows more about what triggers his changes than he does. But it's not exactly the sort of thing that crops up in polite conversation is it? You can't just casually announce to your new travelling companions that you share your head with another four personalities, and only one of you is human.

That first time... We were four, in the middle of nowhere. Cloud had brought Vincent, Cid and I along, but we'd managed to get ourselves in a bad way, outnumbered by behemoths and hard pressed to even hold our own. Some of us were nursing injuries we'd accumulated over the past couple of days, so when we found ourselves penned in from all sides we had little choice. We had to push back hard in order to get out of there and Vincent did a lot of that pushing. He'd already shrugged off hits that would send the rest of us reeling, but even he was starting to look worse for wear. There was blood streaming down what little I could see of his face, and something had obviously gotten too close for comfort, because his left hand was clutching at his side. Cloud and Cid were holed up against some trees, too far away to help. I was closer, but not by much. Besides, I had behemoth problems of my own to deal with.

Of course, there's always a way things can go even more wrong, isn't there?

I could hear gunfire to my left, but all of a sudden it was drowned out by the howling of a monster pack. "Tifa! Get back!" I looked over at the sound of Vincent's voice, went stock still and almost lost my head to one of the animals I was fighting. I'd turned just in time to see him double over, grasping at whatever wound he'd received before, only this time there were creatures all over him – too many. Blood now poured out from under his gauntlet, but he didn't stop firing. He emptied an entire clip into the nearest behemoth, but that didn't discourage any of the others. I was nearest, I had to do something. Slamming my own opponent into the ground as hard as I could, I started to break over to him, but he thrust out his clawed hand to stop me, heedless of his injury, and spat out his warning again: "No! Get _back_!"

I was set to ignore his words - after all, there's some things you just don't do, and one of them is leave a friend in the middle of a fight. But my brain held my body in check. Initially it was that "you will do as I say" Turk tone kicking in, but for once that wasn't the over-riding factor. What suddenly occurred to me was that for the first time, I could hear feeling in his voice, real feeling. He had _hissed_ those words, with anger and hatred and pain.

In spite of all this, part of me was still tempted to ignore his stubbornness and go to help since he was obviously hurt, until I saw his eyes. Even under normal circumstances they're a little frightening. They're coloured a deep red and Vincent always has a certain intensity when he looks at you that amplifies the un-nerving effect. What they don't do however, is glow. And that's what they were doing now, as if they were on fire. That burning glow stopped me in my tracks. Then he threw back his head , screamed, and it all went to Hell.

From here on in, it all becomes jumbled and confused in my memory.

That scream tore from his throat and just didn't stop. It went on and on and on, never-ending, mixing with the cries of the monsters around us. But it didn't just mix with them, it _became_ them. Vincent was still there in the epicentre, but he was no longer the Vincent I recognised. His body warped in front of my eyes, contorting and bending and _growing_ into something else, something terrible. His skin darkened, began to merge with his clothing, until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Someone shouted my name, but I couldn't place it over the sickening sound of flesh being torn apart. Vincent's flesh. His hands elongated, became claws. Became a monster.

It roared. I passed out.

I came to as Cloud was pulling me away, it could only have been a few seconds later. I wished I hadn't. We dove for cover, as what had once been the quiet gunman we knew as Vincent Valentine took everything living it could lay it's claws on and ripped them to shreds.

Somehow Cloud, Cid and I made it back to camp. The others were so busy pouring potions down our throats that it was a while before anyone noticed that Vincent wasn't with us. That took... A _lot_ of explaining, especially as we weren't even sure what had happened, and we were there.

I spent the rest of that day apart from the others, processing, trying to work through in my head what I'd seen with my eyes. At first I was scared. Ha, no, petrified would be closer to the mark. That _thing_ had been around us, part of our group for weeks. Always taking the night watch, we could have all been killed as we slept, at any time. Torn to pieces, just like the creatures in the wood...

Aeris found me still sitting there hours later, arms wrapped round my legs shivering, tears streaming down my face. She offered me a little smile, and sat down next to me without saying a word. She knew I didn't want to talk yet, or be talked at, but just the physical presence of having someone else there was a rock to cling to in a sea of uncertainty. Bless her, she always did know what to do to make things better, even if it was as simple as doing nothing at all.

I lost track of how long she stayed with me, but her calming influence had an effect. Reason started to kick in, pushing some of the fear aside. No-one is born being able to do what I saw happen to Vincent. A man changing into a monster like that, it wasn't natural. But then of course, he'd suffered from the intervention of someone who specialised in the un-natural, hadn't he? – Hojo. Was this _his_ doing? It had to be.

And that started me crying again, not from terror this time but from sadness. I felt ashamed – Vincent wasn't a thing, he was a man. A man that had been reduced to a test subject, sliced, diced and had another creature implanted in him against his will. He hadn't asked for this. It was another score to settle with Hojo, another one that sick bastard owed us. And in spite of everything, he had tried to protect us, told me to back off, and as far as I could tell, hadn't come hunting us down when he'd decimated the monsters. I wasn't over it by any stretch of the imagination – it took a long time to fully reconcile everything - but I wasn't quite so afraid anymore either. I still had questions, more now than before. Was the transformation what he'd meant by his 'punishment'? What had he done, to feel that he deserved this?

Of course as the hours passed, all of my questions looked as if they'd be rendered academic. We'd seen neither hide nor hair of Vincent since the fight that morning. It was dubious as to whether he'd come back at all after what had transpired. Barret suggested we leave in the morning to continue our journey, with or without our reclusive Turk. It didn't take much to tell he was hoping for the latter.

Night had long since fallen by the time he returned. I'd offered to keep watch – what with one thing and another sleep was being incredibly hard to come by. I was there, staring into space when the sound of gently crackling leaves signalled his approach. That immediately struck me as odd. Vincent moves like a wraith, and if he doesn't want you to hear him, then you won't. Not until it's too late. I was hearing him because he wanted to give us that warning.

I waited for him.

Up close, he looked battered. He was human again, but covered in blood. Impossible to tell if it was his or the enemies he'd killed earlier, it was so mixed up. I could see he was still hurt though, cuts and scrapes criss-crossed what was visible of his face, and the injury he'd taken to the side earlier obviously pained him. To be honest, after what his body had been through I was amazed he was still standing. His eyes were lidded and wary, like he was about to bolt at the slightest provocation. He probably was; I think he truly expected to be chased off and told never to return.

He saw me scramble to my feet, and seemed to waver a moment before deciding to walk over to where I stood. He didn't hurry. If anything, I think if he could have drawn the moment out any longer, he would have, anything to put off the inevitable that awaited him.

I looked up at him as he neared, my voice a whisper. "Does it hurt?" I wasn't really sure whether I was referring to the transformation or his current condition. Maybe both.

Vincent didn't reply immediately – I suppose he'd been expecting a different kind of greeting, but I couldn't bear the thought of one of our group being in such pain. Even when he did answer, he refused to meet my eyes and simply said "... a little." Which coming from him probably meant it was agony. I could feel the sympathy welling up inside again, but I didn't think sympathy was what he needed from me. Instead, I guided him over to where the fire was burning low, and pulled out my medical supplies to clean his wounds. Surprisingly, he let himself be led. Just goes to show how much had been taken out of him.

He flinched when I touched him, not from pain I don't think, but because he was so un-used to simple human contact. I worked in silence – see, Aeris had taught me a thing or two, even if she didn't know it.

Until now, he'd always shielded himself from our prying eyes by hiding behind that red cloak of his. Beyond the unruly raven hair and wine red eyes, no-one actually knew what Vincent _looked_ like. It was another of those barriers he erected around himself, to stop us getting too close. I know that now.

I acted without thinking, going to unbuckle the material that covered his face so I could wash away the blood from all those cuts. I'd barely even moved, before his claw snapped up and grasped my wrist – even half dead like this he was faster than I could blink. Those red eyes of his looked wild for a second; I was trying to cross a boundary I'd forgotten existed. We stayed like that, frozen in tableau for what felt like an eternity until he seemed to relent, dropping his hand and eyes in acquiescence. To this day I have no idea what made him do that - Vincent has always been fiercely protective of the shields he's built around himself – he must have been exhausted.

I don't know what Vincent sees when he looks in a mirror, but I don't think it's what the rest of us do. Something tells me that when he looks at himself, all he sees is the demons. What gets reflected back at him is the twisted features of Chaos, the years of bitterness and blood. He doesn't see what I did that night. A man, beautiful, timeless and sad – so very sad and lonely it's enough to break your heart.

I couldn't stop the tears from falling anew. His jaw rippled as he tried to turn his face away from me, ashamed I think. But I wasn't crying because of what he was, he needed to know that much at least. "Hojo did this to you, didn't he?" I asked gently, though nothing could disguise my own hatred for the man.

Again, only silence greeted me to begin with, and I thought he wasn't going to answer at all... He seldom did. But eventually he spoke, haltingly, of what had happened to him thirty years ago. How he'd loved a woman more than he'd ever loved anything in this world. Given her all he could of himself, tried to protect her from the dangerous path she wanted to pursue only to be rejected in favour of the Shinra Professor. She'd told him to let her make her own choices, and so he'd watched as she gave herself to the Jenova Project and was slowly destroyed. He'd confronted Hojo when he could bear it no longer, though it was too late by then. Shot and effectively killed by the scientist, he'd undergone months of experimentation, where his body was changed and various creatures bonded with him. They emerged when he was pushed to his limits, angry or injured. Then, when Hojo had tired of his pet project, he'd put him to sleep and locked him up in the basement.

"We'll make him pay." My voice was thick.

We all have our pasts, our secrets, things that we hide from the world. I still carry the guilt over some of the events that happened back in Midgar. All those people died in Sector 7 because of Avalanche's fight against Shinra. My fight. I have to tell myself that the fault lies with the company and its President – it's the only way I can live with it. They are the ones who destroyed the plate. But it's these very things that forge us into who we are. I wish I'd said that to him at the time, but then I could fill a book with things I _wish_ I'd said. And I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it would be a damn sight longer than my one about Vincent.

It takes a lot to push him to that point of transformation, thanks to the rest of Hojo's less than gentle ministrations and his own iron willpower. His life is a veritable tightrope walk of control. Vincent barely even blinked when a green Nibel dragon tried to shred him, just gave a "Hnn" of what you'd call irritation if anyone else did it. Mind you, the dragon tried to do it again when it saw he was still standing and the next thing we knew, Galian Beast was ripping its' throat out, so maybe he's not quite as unflappable as he seems.

See? I can joke about it now. Like I said, it took me a while to fully accept the idea of him changing form; I was scared and it was so sudden... But now it's almost a side note. Cloud has blue eyes, Yuffie has sticky fingers, Vincent has his transformations.

He still kept himself apart from us though, nothing we did could seem to change that. He'd be there – you could always count on him, that's for sure – but social situations were so far out of his comfort zone it was untrue. I know Cloud was surprised when he saw the unmistakeable figure of Vincent stalking across the plains before we set off for that final battle. Most of us thought that we'd never see him again after everyone being told to find their reason for fighting. He'd got his revenge on Hojo, what else was there for him? I wasn't so sure though, I was beginning to understand him by this point.

If there's one thing you can say about Vincent, it's that he has a staggeringly unshakeable sense of honour. Yes, he'd sent the scientist responsible for the Jenova Project to the deepest reaches of Hell, but his duty didn't end there, not in his mind. What he saw as his failure to interfere all those years ago resulted in Sephiroth, and he saw that as something to atone for as well.

Would it have made any difference if he had stepped in sooner instead of holding back? In a way I have my doubts. When he did confront Hojo, he ended up getting killed and the experiment continued. So I don't think it would have mattered in the grand scheme of things, Hojo would have gone ahead with the Project regardless. The difference is that Vincent wouldn't believe he failed. He might not have been able to change anything, but he doesn't know because he didn't try until it was too late and that has eaten away at him for over thirty years now.

In all honesty, I'm surprised he's not mad. How does he bear it?

What we on the outside see as a perfect polished mirror, isn't at all. It's a mirror that's been shattered and glued back together in a semblance of what it used to be – held together more by sheer force of will than anything else. It's kind of a metaphor for him, really. Hojo took him apart and remade him into… Who he is now. Maybe he _is_ mad.

I know his guise is flawed, because I've seen it waver. I was there, that first time we wandered into a cave, deep in the middle of nowhere, and came face to face with _her_. When for a moment, just the briefest fraction of a second, the mirror fractured, the shards piercing something inside of him that still hurts.

He sees something of himself in Cloud, I'm sure. They both blame themselves for the death of someone they cared about. The difference between them is that Cloud was looking for someone to forgive him. Vincent never even believed he deserved such a thing in the first place. I think he was concerned, in his own way. He doesn't want Cloud to end up the way he did.

They talk, sometimes. Neither of them use very much in the way of words, it feels like they say more through their silences instead. They understand each other. Cloud led us during that year travelling the planet, and whilst neither would admit to it, I'm certain that on more than one occasion when he made a decision, Cloud's eyes flickered over to the silent ex-Turk in corner of the room, as if for approval. And I'm just as certain that there would be a nearly imperceptible reply – the blink of an eye, the tiniest fraction of a nod – and Cloud would carry on.

He's come a long way since we first found him in that dusty old coffin. We're a ragtag bunch of people each with our own shortcomings, and it hasn't always been easy, but we've stuck by him through it all. We know who he is and love him for it, not in spite of it. He's still his own worst enemy in many ways, too quiet, very afraid to trust. I want to help him, though it'll take more than a hug and a few kind words to set him right. He's been hurt so badly in the past that it's very difficult for him to have faith in people now. I think Vincent, for all his outward appearance, is afraid. I want him to know he's not alone anymore.

But there's a photograph in my bar. It was taken not all that long ago, shortly after the incident with Omega. Barret has a huge grin on his face and Marlene on his shoulder. Cloud's still got his motorbike goggles on, having just ridden in on Fenrir. Cid's there smoking a cigarette, while Yuffie's hand is inching towards his wallet. Red's sitting next to Reeve, both of them trying to look serious but only one succeeding. I'm there too with a raised glass in my hand, happy to be surrounded by my friends.

Lastly, standing next to me, is Vincent Valentine. He looks a little stiff - not entirely comfortable with the whole thing - and his arms are crossed protectively in front of his chest, but he's there. His cloak isn't covering his face anymore and if you look closely, _really_ closely and you know what you're looking for, you can see the faintest ghost of a smile on his porcelain features.

And that's a start.


End file.
